Directed-energy weapon

Directed-energy weapon

Main article: Teleforce

Later in life, Tesla made claims concerning a "teleforce" weapon after studying the Van de Graaff generator.^[138][139] The press called it a "peace ray" or death ray.^[140][141] Tesla described the weapon as being able to be used against ground-based infantry or for antiaircraft purposes.

Tesla gives the following description concerning the "particle gun's" operation:

[The nozzle would] send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 200 miles from a defending nation's border and will cause armies to drop dead in their tracks.^[142][143]

In total, the components and methods included:

• An apparatus for producing manifestations of energy in free air instead of in a high vacuum as in the past.
• A mechanism for generating tremendous electrical force.
• A means of intensifying and amplifying the force developed by the second mechanism.
• A new method for producing a tremendous electrical repelling force. This would be the projector, or gun, of the invention.^{[144][145][146]}

Tesla claimed to have worked on plans for a directed-energy weapon from the early 1900s until his death.^[147][148]

In 1937, at a luncheon in his honor concerning the death ray, Tesla stated, "But it is not an experiment ... I have built, demonstrated and used it. Only a little time will pass before I can give it to the world." His records indicate that the device is based on a narrow stream of small tungsten pellets that are accelerated via high voltage (by means akin to hismagnifying transformer).^[139]

During the same year, Tesla wrote a treatise, The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media,^[149] concerning charged particle beamweapons.^[150] Tesla published the document in an attempt to expound on the technical description of a "superweapon that would put an end to all war." This treatise is currently in the Nikola Tesla Museum archive in Belgrade. It describes an open-ended vacuum tube with a gas jet seal that allows particles to exit, a method of charging particles to millions of volts, and a method of creating and directing non-dispersive particle streams (through electrostatic repulsion).^[150] Tesla tried to interest the US War Department,^[151]the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia in the device.^[152]

During the period in which the negotiations were being carried on, Tesla said that efforts had been made to steal the invention. His room had been entered and his papers had been scrutinized, but the thieves, or spies, left empty-handed. He said that there was no danger that his invention could be stolen, for he had at no time committed any part of it to paper. The blueprint for the teleforce weapon was all in his mind.^[153]